BY TAMARA PEARSON
Los Angeles, 1950: A pre-war light-rail system, one of the most extensive in the world, was dismembered by car, tyre and bus manufacturers and an oil company. Tracks were ripped from their routes, stations were torn down and row after row of trams were torched.
General Motors, one of the companies responsible, argued that the replacement of trams by buses and cars was "modernisation". In fact, all that was achieved was a massive increase in the profits of those companies and the transformation of LA into an environmental and social wreck.
Uncontrolled suburban sprawl has led to urban blight. The city is now a 100-kilometre-wide area of concrete and steel: the famous system of freeways, built for high speeds but often clogged with traffic. LA has some of the worst pollution levels in the world and its people have little choice but to use cars.
The situation in Australia is comparable. New roads are built while railways become less reliable. Consistent with governments' general policy of selling off public services to private companies, and restructuring others to make them more saleable in future, private sector participation in road development and management is strongly encouraged.
Privatisation
The Australian Rail Track Corporation has been established to "operate on sound commercial principles". The Indian Pacific and Ghan are now in private hands. The National Rail Corporation, a product of the 1990s "reform" of the railways, provides a "profitable world-class freight operation ... focus[ing] on the requirements of business".
Last Easter, Adelaide's bus service was privatised. Operations were transferred from the publicly owned and managed TransAdelaide to private operators Serco, Torrens Transit and Australian Transit Enterprises.
Five hundred people lost their jobs in the changeover and almost immediately, Serco stopped using disabled-access buses.
In Brisbane, a joint venture between Venice Simplon Express and the Queensland government created the Great South Pacific Express, which will attempt to emulate luxury European train travel.
In Melbourne, the metropolitan train and tram networks were privatised in 1999. The trams are now operated by two companies, Yarra and Swanston.
National Express, Metrolink and Melbourne Transport Enterprises are the three private companies that now operate Melbourne's trams and trains. Freight Victoria (backed among other corporations by Rail America and by the Colonial and ANZ banks) runs Victoria's country rail network.
The CityLink tollway, one of the world's largest privately funded roads, costing $2 billion to construct, was completed in December. Toll cards for the electronic tolling system were developed by Touchcorp and Shell. The tollway itself is owned by Transurban.
Under the Melbourne CityLink Act, the state government must block alternative road routes, not upgrade the rail system if that reduces motorists' use of the tollway and subsidise Transurban if it suffers a shortfall in prejected revenue. The company also gets substantial tax benefits.
In March 1999, new roads were blocked off in the Docklands area to avoid legal action by Transurban, which can demand compensation if the new roads adversely affect its revenue.
The Victorian Labor government recently announced it will build Merri Creek freeway, yet an extensive report by Professor Bill Russell documents that the freeway is not necessary. He suggests attacking the root causes of the traffic congestion which the government says makes the new freeway necessary, not just the symptoms: "A new freeway alone will encourage more truck traffic and congestion for Melbourne as a whole rather than reduce it, even if it provides (at vast cost) some local relief".
The report explains how investment in highways drives out other forms of transport, and promotes an alternative, integrated approach towards transport planning involving highway, public transport and rail freight improvement.
"VicRoads [a private company] is so hell-bent on building this freeway that it has not always presented the whole picture to the government or the public", says Friends of Merri Creek spokesperson Linda Parlane. But VicRoads' intentions are clear; its own web site states that the company's key initiatives are to: "Seek to influence the principles of Commonwealth core business funding" and "Identify and develop appropriate opportunities for private sector sponsorship".
The privatisation of buses in Perth (now owned by Perth Bus, Path Transit and Southern Coast Transit) resulted in immediate job losses. Drivers' pay and conditions also dropped as drivers were forced off the Public Transport Union award onto the general transport award. As well, fares increased and ticket validity time was cut.
The bus drivers are being denied rest periods and are suffering increased stress, in some cases causing family and health breakdowns. Their response on April 18 to strike for five days received strong public support at the many picket lines that were set up.
The Western Australian government's own Metropolitan Transport Strategy admits that expanding the road system will not meet the region's long-term requirements.
In 1995, the government announced the building of a "city northern bypass". This 6-km supposed solution to traffic congestion ended up costing nearly $400 million, funded by an extra tax on petrol. The contract for the project was given to BCJV consortium: the "C" stands for Clough Engineering, a company owned by a family with a long association with the WA Liberal Party.
Roads bought
In Sydney, while the railways are being corporatised, more roads are being constructed and bought, and on much the same publicly subsidised terms as in Victoria.
Sydney's M2 motorway is one example. It was constructed and is operated by Hills Motorway Consortium, in which Macquarie Bank is a major investor. The NSW government signed a contract to guarantee the profitability of the tollway for the next 45 years, which means ensuring that there is no competition from alternative roadways or forms of transport.
In the meantime, since 1995, the railway system has been split into four entities, making it easier to sell off to private operators.
Some aspects of the service have already been privatised. The maintenance of the East Hill line and the Illawarra line is in hands of Fluor Daniel (a US company principally involved in the chemicals, plastics, oils and gas industries, with little experience in Australian railway maintenance). The Richmond line is in the hands of both the Rail Services Authority and Thiess (whose history includes land clearing, contract ploughing, dam sinking, road construction, coalmining, building of airfields for US bases and currently has joint projects with the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota).
Over the last 15 years, the signal, carriage and track maintenance, ticket machines, train and station security, station construction, provision of casual staff and staff recruitment have all been privatised.
In 1998, the NSW Labor government adopted a policy within State Rail to reduce costs for new private contractors. It called for an "affordable safety policy", which in practice means the watering down of safety regulations. Transport minister Carl Scully pushed for the introduction of "customer services management" in State Rail, which involves multi-skilling, fewer work breaks, 12-hour shifts, less training and less skilled people performing the work. Four hundred jobs were lost under the scheme.
The potential consequences of such changes were made clear in England when on October 5, 1999, 31 people were killed in the Paddington rail disaster. Low safety and maintenance standards, similar to those in NSW, were found to be responsible for the disaster. Railtrack, the private owner-operator, was also found to be cutting corners in driver training in order to maximise profits.
No solution
While Sydney's train services remain unreliable, are increasingly unsafe and fares keep rising, the government looks to roads as the solution. It has poured billions into the Hume Highway while the parallel rail infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate.
The disastrous results for people's health and the environment are becoming clearer. A recent study by the Health and Air Research Program explained: "The RTA's [Roads and Traffic Authority] freeway-building policy, if continued for the next 25 years, would result in a 600% increase in congestion and a 36% decline in air quality".
Yet another road disaster is now being planned. The Western Sydney Orbital, a 39-km stretch of bitumen linking the M2 and F3 motorways, and which will cost $1.25 billion to build, was announced at the beginning of the year.
The building of this road is politically motivated, aimed at winning seats in the next election, especially the narrowly Liberal-held seat of Parramatta. But the road will be only partly funded by the government and motorists will have to pay a toll of $4-5, so it is unlikely to win much public support.
Tom McLoughlin from Friends of the Earth says the Western Sydney Orbital is another "environmental con job" which reflects a "1950s transport policy ... pandering to the road construction lobby". "How long will it take before this new road has an average vehicle speed of 20 kilometres per hour and congests like all other roads?", he asks.
The road-building "solution" to big cities transport problems is limited by the fact that eventually there will be no space left. Already confronting this problem in Los Angeles, the motor industry is now pushing for a system of computer-controlled cars travelling bumper to bumper: an incredibly expensive, socially undesirable and environmentally even more destructive plan, but one which has the support of the US government.
US President George W. Bush refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on fossil fuel emissions because the treaty "isn't in the interest of American industry", that is, it could adversely affect the constantly increasing profits of the oil companies, which currently make up seven of the 11 richest corporations in the world.
The Australian Coalition government was undoubtedly motivated not to sign the Kyoto treaty for similar reasons, reasons which also underlie the current transport policies of all governments in Australia.
It's time for an entirely different approach which puts the health and well-being of people and the environment before the profits of the private transport-related corporations. To adapt a Cree Indian saying: "Only when the last tree has died, the last street has been sold and every inch of life has been transformed into a commodity for profit, will they realise we can't breathe money."